Kenneth Branagh's Thor is box office hit

An insider’s guide to the world of cinema by David Gritten.

Italian actor Franco Nero, now 69, is the latest veteran to benefit from a late career revival courtesy of Quentin Tarantino. His cult 1966 spaghetti western Django has been rewritten by Tarantino, and Nero will have a supporting role in the new film, titled Django Unchained.

In the original, Nero’s Django was a vengeful gunfighter who rids a town of Mexican bandits and Klansmen. In Tarantino’s version Django is a freed black slave who, with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), hunts down a cruel plantation owner.

The original Django can be seen on May 28 at London’s Italian Cultural Institute, the evening after Nero shares a stage with his wife, Vanessa Redgrave, discussing his film career. This celebrates Nero receiving an honorary degree from Brunel University.

A new era for British documentaries? A cricket film called From the Ashes may offer clues. It’s a stirring account of the remarkable comeback by England (led by Ian Botham) to win the 1981 Test series against Australia. It will be screened for one night only in 130 cinemas on Tuesday.

It’s the first film out of the gate for The Documentary Company, a new source of commercial equity funding available for British feature-length documentaries.

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Sheryl Crown, who heads up the fund, says: “Documentaries are cheaper and easier to get made than feature films, and investors have a better chance of seeing the budget recouped. Audiences are also open to human stories and first-class storytelling about subjects that mean something – different from the range of films made in Hollywood.”

Those of us who generally wish Kenneth Branagh well are delighted by the public’s enthusiasm for Thor, the sword-and-sorcery sci-fi thriller he directed. In its opening weekend, it was the most widely-seen film in Britain, grossing £5.4m. And in another 56 international territories (excluding the US) it made $89m (£54m).

Branagh was on the wrong end of negative comments prior to Thor’s opening. A mean-minded profile in another national newspaper prompted a rebuke from the same paper’s film critic, who referred to Branagh in his subsequent review as “this very intelligent and now unjustly maligned director”. Many other reviewers found that Thor surpassed their expectations.

Thor’s success should give Branagh the latitude to direct whatever he wishes – for a while, at least. Good for him.